The Winter Olympic Games that the Italian ski resort hosted in 1956 must have made a big impression on someone in the Ford marketing department for them to name their new family car after it.

As a publicity stunt to help launch the car in 1964, several Cortinas were driven down the town's bobsleigh track, the Eugenio Monti olympic track, by a group of drivers including Jim Clark, winner of the Formula One World Championships the previous year. 

It must have worked because the Ford Cortina made vehicle ownership a goal the average family could aspire to and went on to become Britain's best-selling car of the 1970s. 

The other thing I learned this week was that the joint bid for 2026 between Milan and Cortina will change the future of the Winter Olympic Games – and possibly the Summer ones, too – forever.

For this may be branded a Milan Cortina 2026 bid, but it is really a nationwide one embracing large areas of Italy. Cortina is 411 kilometres from Milan and is one of four clusters that will host events. We spent nearly 20 hours over two days in a minibus touring some of the venues. 

Stockholm Åre 2026, Milan and Cortina's only rivals, have a similar concept with the Alpine skiing 600 kilometres away, the sliding sports in a different country and the ski jumping and Nordic combined a three-hour drive from the Swedish capital. 

Whoever wins, it will open the door in the future to similar bids embracing the whole country and even multi-nation bids with countries coming together to pool their resources. So, for example why could you not have a bid where Austria hosts Alpine skiing and sliding sports, Hungary the speed skating and Slovakia the ice hockey? 

Then the argument will be, that if you can do it for the Winter Olympics, why not the Summer Games, too?

It is certainly more sustainable in the long term and will avoid building expensive venues, like for bobsleigh, which have a limited legacy. We call them white elephants, the Italians refer to them as "cathedrals in the desert". 

It will, however, change the unique nature of the Olympic Games. Gone will be everyone gathering together in one place for two-and-a-half weeks to celebrate sport to be replaced by a series of World Championships spread around one or more country at the same time. 

In fact, it is more or less the model that Marius Vizer wanted to introduce when he became President of SportAccord and which the IOC were so fiercely opposed to. 

It was clear, however, that unless change was undertaken the Winter Olympic Games was living on borrowed time. Sochi spent $51 billion  (£39 billion/€45 billion) building a new winter wonderland from scratch to host the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games but there are not many benefactors like the Russian Government for the IOC to call upon.

So, under Agenda 2020, there is a drive is to use existing facilities and cut spending to a minimum. Adapt or die appears to be the message and it is one which Milan Cortina 2026 and Stockholm Åre 2026 have embraced wholeheartedly. 

"What is really important is that all the locations create special atmosphere," Christophe Dubi, the IOC's executive director for the Olympic Games, told insidethegames. 

"What is important is that everyone feels they are part of the Games, that they hear the music of the Games. We are not diluting the experience, we are reinforcing the Olympic brand by hosting events in the best way that winter sport can offer."

Perhaps I should look at investing in a reconditioned Ford Cortina if I am going to need to get around so much in the future?